I have been listening to John Coltrane. More particularly, I have been watching a studio performance by his Quintet from 1961, of his interpretation of the song, “My Favorite Things”, written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein a couple of years earlier. There is much to admire in this old black and white archive recording, including a delightful piano solo by McCoy Tyner, who died last month, and some under-stated yet compelling percussion by Elvin Jones. Then there is Coltrane himself, the great saxophonist, finding ample scope for virtuosic improvisation within the formal structure of the verses, drawing out many shades of colour and contrast around the melodic line that – seemingly – he alone knew might be hiding there. Listening to him play is better than eating schnitzel with noodles.
Continue reading “Arodnap”Beckettmas
When I was a small child, history taught at school comprised a series of stories, each one recounting the great deeds of some famous man or, occasionally, famous woman. I imagine that each country has its own selection of national heroes and heroines, exemplars for the young, whose exploits are re-told to each generation of children: Robin Hood in England, Joan d’Arc in France, William Tell in Switzerland, and Paul Revere in New England. And, if you live in Argentina, I guess it will now be Diego Maradona.
Continue reading “Beckettmas”Reciprocity
A few years ago, I flew to Canada to attend a friend’s wedding. Towards the end of my stay I lost my mobile phone. There was a time when losing a phone would be nothing more than a moderate inconvenience, since they can be insured, quickly replaced, and have neither intrinsic nor sentimental value. They once were disposable items. However, in the past decade they have become objects of greater significance owing to the large amount of information they store and the multiple functionality they possess. We use them to send messages and emails, connect with social media applications and the internet, store contact details and photographs, wake us up in the morning and tell us the time during the day, allow us to pay bills and transfer money, listen to music and watch videos and podcasts, find our current location and the best route to our destination, and, from time to time, we even use them to make phone calls.
Continue reading “Reciprocity”Merit
Last month, when it was possible to visit art galleries in London, I spent an hour looking at paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi at the National Gallery. Despite her reputation in her lifetime as the greatest woman artist of her age – she was born in 1593 and died around 1654 – and, since we never qualify our judgments of male artists in that way, let me say more correctly that she was one of the greatest artists of her age, nonetheless this is the first exhibition devoted to her work in the United Kingdom. She managed her own career and reputation, living and working at various times in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and London, mixing with interesting people, securing important patronage, and making a significant number of impressive paintings. This, after surviving the trauma and humiliation of being raped in her late teens by an associate of her father’s, who was later found guilty at trial and exiled. She was, then, a person who overcame an early crisis, to flourish in her chosen career at a time when the achievement of personal independence and professional success were rare for women. She did not allow the disadvantages imposed on her by others to deflect her determination to succeed. Her life is an exemplary case of well-earned success, even if it has taken 350 years for the management of Britain’s art galleries to take due notice.
The neglect of Artemisia’s achievement, by other artists, scholars, critics, and gallery-goers, is hardly unique. There are many women whose work has been ignored, trivialised, excluded from the museums and auction houses, despite its evident qualities. A year ago, the Barbican Centre held an exhibition of work by the American artist Lee Krasner, only her second solo show in London (the first, held at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1965), demonstrating that abstract expressionism was never solely a male preoccupation, despite the fact that both public and private collections continue to prioritise work by Pollock, Rothko, and de Kooning over work of comparable quality by Krasner, Frankenthaler, and Mitchell. One of Krasner’s teachers, Hans Hofmann, once said of her work, “this is so good you would not know it was painted by a woman.” Under a certain view of the world, this might count as a compliment. Alternatively, it reflects the impoverished and uneducated character of the standard male gaze.
Continue reading “Merit”Translating myself
We walked together through the Olympic Park in east London, about a month ago, on a bright October morning, talking, as we often do, about the books we had recently read. In my case, Another Country, a James Baldwin novel from the early 1960s which I had greatly enjoyed. In his case the plays of Bertolt Brecht. He was also reading some secondary literature on the German author and he mentioned that some critics consider Brecht’s best work to be his poetry. Like many people who read only in English, I think of him primarily as a dramatist, one of the best from the previous century. However, our conversation prompted me to recall a review of the new English translation of his Collected Poems, which came out a couple of years ago, which stressed the centrality of poetry to his oeuvre. At well over one thousand pages, it is an intimidatingly large body of work, which I have yet to engage with, although I know that I have a shorter selection of his poems on one of my many bookshelves, awaiting my attention.
Continue reading “Translating myself”